Kahn Brothers Adds $100 Million To Long Portfolio

The fund run by the world’s oldest active institutional investor has made public its 13-F filing for the first quarter of 2013. The company shows $678,710,208 under management at the end of the first quarter in this filing, which only covers long equity bets, compared to $576,176,273 at the end of 2012.

In this quarter, some of the company’s biggest bets made up the majority of the long portfolio. Merck & Co., Inc. (NYSE:MRK) shares were held to a value of $51,478,048; Citigroup Inc (NYSE:C) shares were valued at $60,871,275; and Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE) holdings were valued at $74,240,493.

Those three holdings combined made up close to one third of the company’s outstanding long bets. In the quarter, the company increased its holdings in Merck & Co., Inc. (NYSE:MRK) from 1,090,437 to 1,164,661; increased Citigroup Inc (NYSE:C) holdings slightly from 1,343,810 to 1,343,933; and increased its holdings in Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE) from 2,468,814 shares to 2,572,436 shares.

The firm did not make any really major moves in the three months between December 31st 2012 and March 31st 2013. It only entered one position in the period, and did not exit any of its outstanding long positions. According to the filing, Kahn Brothers entered into a 444,342 share position in Trinity Place Holdings Inc (OTCMKTS:SYMSQ), a defunct retail company, that was valued at $1,915,114 at the end of the first quarter of the year.

Other moves of note made by Kahn Brothers include a purchase of close to 600,000 shares in Nam Tai Electric, increasing its position to 3,420,936 shares valued at $46,524,736; an increase of about 20,000 shares in MBIA Inc. (NYSE:MBI), one of its more successful bets over the last three months; and the purchase of close to 2,000,000 shares in The New York Times Company (NYSE:NYT), bringing its stake in the firm to 5,152,608 at the end of the quarter.

Kahn Brothers is an old school long investor, based on the original ideas that founded the discipline of value investing. The company made few big changes in its long portfolio in the period because it picked companies it liked, and stuck with them.

As long as that continues to work out, the company will have very little to worry about, and with a $100 million increase in long investments under management from the end of the previous quarter, something is working.